Metal shaped into colourful jewellery and interesting objects at Bilk

Peta Kruger and Larah Nott have exhibited regularly at Bilk Gallery, usually in curated group exhibitions. This is their first exhibition here together. Nott and Kruger share an interest in working with metal. Both artists shape, bend, fold and construct metal into sculptural shapes to make jewellery and objects.

Peta Kruger is an alumna of Adelaide’s JamFactory associate program in the Metal Design Studio. In 2007 she worked at Cockpit Arts in London with Scott Wilson and Jane Adam. In 2011 she received an Arts Jump Mentorship Grant from the Australia Council and funding from the Ian Potter Foundation to undertake a mentorship with German/New Zealander jeweller Karl Fritsch.

Kruger’s background is in graphic design and illustration. Her work demonstrates a love of pattern and colour and, although she finds inspiration in nature, it is nature filtered through historic art styles such as Art Deco and Futurism. Costume jewellery and the patterns in retro glass are also influential in her designs. Kruger notes the methods of fold, play and paint she uses in her jewellery are activities that go back to her childhood. It is perhaps apt that earlier in her career Kruger was artist-in-residence at an Adelaide Primary School. She now works from Adelaide.

Kruger’s jewellery is created from small segmented components, usually in brass. These segments are folded and assembled together into geometric and organic forms. The emphasis is on the multifaceted planes, rather like Japanese origami, created by the folds. Although made of metal, these works are deceptive as they look soft, fluid and fragile.

However, interesting as this construction is, the true distinction of Kruger’s jewellery is in the way the metal is coloured. The artist’s sense of design is evident in the construction of her jewellery but what is so striking is the combinations of colours that Kruger brings together. Light and dark tonal patterns are created to emphasise the dynamic structure of each piece. The application of the painted colour is uneven on the metal surfaces and marks like individual brush strokes are evident, personalising each piece. Among all her joyful expressions of colour are the series of stunning necklaces made from folded and shaped links using multiples of rectangles, circles and irregular geometric shapes.

Of special note is the Fold Yield necklace made up of circles. In this work the relationship of colours and the design of the concentric circles are evocative of the work of the Futurist movement. This was a movement started in Italy in the second decade of the 20th century when artists used bold colours and geometric design to convey their interest in new machinery and speed.

Kruger’s training in graphic design has served her well and as well as being innovative, her work also conveys the sense being part of a wider visual language tradition.

Larah Nott now lives in Canberra but initially was a chef and spent her career living in the city and the country. Her work is informed by the architecture of cities and by the patterns of nature. In 2014 she graduated from the Australian National University with a bachelor degree in design art, majoring in gold and silversmithing. Since graduation she has been very successful in achieving recognition for her work.

Nott is interested in architectural space. Her early work centred on using floor plans of famous concert halls as a direct inspiration for her jewellery. These small sculptural brooches were in titanium and steel. The use of titanium was perhaps influenced by the artist Johannes Kuhnen, who was a mentor. In the group of brooches in the exhibition the forms of these original architectural works have become refined and are now not linked to any specific buildings.

Nott has also developed a new circular form in folded metal. In this new form, petal-like edges are folded over to make an inner spatial core. In some of these works the core is decorated with striated marks or inner detailing of dots and markings.

Nott always introduces innovative shapes as links for her necklaces but, although the Ti-15 necklace is no exception, its grey metal colour is a little dull.

Where Larah Nott’s work has become exciting is in her series of larger folded metal objects. The trilobite series is based on the fossilised remains of a group of extinct marine arthropods. Nott’s interpretation made from overlapping steel segments captures beautifully the essence of the trilobites’ segmented like bodies. Although satisfyingly complete as they are (the largest is 55 centimetres  by 26 centimetres by 29 centimetres), these small works have the potential to be scaled up successfully to make striking works of sculptural art.